How’s the Training Going?

So, one of the most common questions Mark and I get these days is “how is the training going?” Often times, there’s only enough time for me to give a quick “It’s going great!” or 1-2 sentences about what we’re up to. THANK YOU for asking! It’s nice to have the support!! For most people two sentences is probably more than enough information, but for those who are interested, here’s a more in-depth answer about what’s going on with our training for the Boston Marathon.

The base training for each of the marathons we’ve trained for thus far has been an 18 week training program that’s available online from “Hal Higdon” titled “Novice 1” (you can find it HERE, but I’ve also attached it below.) How’d we decide to use this one? A) it was free and B) it said novice. And frankly, even after three marathons, I feel like novice is still the appropriate descriptor, so why fix what’s not broken?

If you take April 20^th, 2015 and go back 18 weeks, that brings you to December 15^th.  Now, I can hear you saying, “So you’re not training yet???” That’s not completely true. While I would love to sit back at home, eating bon-bons, swirling a glass of wine, and thinking, “Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of time, the 18 weeks hasn’t started yet!” this is not the case. You see, I would like to avoid embarrassment. This will be our most public marathon attempt (did you know that you can get my bib number and get time updates as I cross certain points on the course??!!) and even the novice marathon training plan requires a good base of cardio. You can see that you have a 6 mile run the first weekend of the program. So, in addition to the 18 week training program, I tacked on an 8 week, 10K (6.2mile) training program to our schedule, just to get me in the habit of sucking it up and going out to run on a regular basis. I’m on the 7^th week of the 8 week training program, running on a regular basis and am finally at the point where running feels good most of the time. It’s hard to believe that this is just the pre-training period.

As for what we do for training: I mostly run around Boston in the afternoon/early evening, Mark generally runs in the mornings before work and we do long runs together on the weekend. I try to get to a spin class once a week, and do yoga at home or in a class at least once a week. This does not always happen. Life is crazy and I would love to be that regimented, but there the ideal training, and then there’s what we do in practice. Once the 18 week period starts, Dana-Farber offers group runs on the weekends, where 100 team members can show up to run and they have a volunteer staff to make sure that there’s water, gatorade and peanut M&M’s along the way. This is *amazing* (the last three we’ve done it on our own and have relied on water fountains, pit stops along the way and water bottle belts.

Beyond the usual weekday runs, lately we’ve done a couple of fun runs and races. On Thanksgiving, we did the 4 mile Gobble Gobble Gobble which starts/ends at Davis Square in Somerville among 2998 other runners (probably more –because there were some bandit runners, ahem, Megan Brady!!) and it was probably my fastest race ever. Then we were away for a wedding outside of Chicago and ran from our hotel to Millennium Park and back on a super cold Monday morning, prepared to jog all over the city-only to find that the guide for our running tour had totally forgotten us—so we just ran back to the hotel. Three+ miles in the cold was enough.  Next week we do the Jingle Bell run, which has been a long time favorite—I’ll be decked out in my elf hat, red golf pants, and ugly Christmas sweater, running beside varies Santas, sleighs, reindeer, etc.

So that’s what we’re up to!

Top two pics: Boston Run

Bottom 3 pics: Chicago’s Millenium Park, the “Bean” or “Cloud Gate”

Hal Higdon Novice 1 Marathon Training Schedule:

Week	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
1	Rest	3 m run	3 m run	3 m run	Rest	6	Cross
2	Rest	3 m run	3 m run	3 m run	Rest	7	Cross
3	Rest	3 m run	4 m run	3 m run	Rest	5	Cross
4	Rest	3 m run	4 m run	3 m run	Rest	9	Cross
5	Rest	3 m run	5 m run	3 m run	Rest	10	Cross
6	Rest	3 m run	5 m run	3 m run	Rest	7	Cross
7	Rest	3 m run	6 m run	3 m run	Rest	12	Cross
8	Rest	3 m run	6 m run	3 m run	Rest	Rest	Half Marathon
9	Rest	3 m run	7 m run	4 m run	Rest	10	Cross
10	Rest	3 m run	7 m run	4 m run	Rest	15	Cross
11	Rest	4 m run	8 m run	4 m run	Rest	16	Cross
12	Rest	4 m run	8 m run	5 m run	Rest	12	Cross
13	Rest	4 m run	9 m run	5 m run	Rest	18	Cross
14	Rest	5 m run	9 m run	5 m run	Rest	14	Cross
15	Rest	5 m run	10 m run	5 m run	Rest	20	Cross
16	Rest	5 m run	8 m run	4 m run	Rest	12	Cross
17	Rest	4 m run	6 m run	3 m run	Rest	8	Cross
18	Rest	3 m run	4 m run	2 m run	Rest	Rest	Marathon